Jewellery Designers

Year 9 students create their own accessories in Design and Technology classes.

The Year 9s are in the thick of their current DT project – to design and make a bespoke item of jewellery, be it a brooch, ear rings, necklace, bracelet or hair accessory.

At the beginning of the process, Miss Crawford asked students to put themselves in a designer’s shoes and analyse the design brief. The caveat was that their piece of jewellery had to be both comfortable and practical to wear. It had to be made from copper or aluminium, and it had to be suitable for and appealing enough for a teenage girl.

What information did they need to design the product? What colours, fashions or styles would work best? What themes or decoration ideas could they use? How about size and safety factors?

To help them prepare, each student put together a mood board filled with key images, text and brand names to project the style of their target audience. Using these boards as inspiration, they approached the design brief with a much clearer idea of colours and themes for the item they could make.

Next, they experimented with shapes on paper. Some girls chose a teardrop shape for a necklace for example; another decided on a pineapple theme. Heart-shaped and arrowhead-shaped jewellery also made the cut.

After choosing the material – copper or aluminium – and deciding on the thickness of the metal, the class set to work cutting around their shapes. They had become acquainted with piercing saws the previous year when they made hanging decorations. Now it was time for them to practise using thinner blades, progressing to 22 teeth per inch as opposed to 16 teeth per inch blades.

The girls also planned whether they would give their design texture or leave it smooth and whether they would work with the department’s new shape cutters.